Gay Marriage as an attack on Christianity

Oh catch me in a word problem as usual. Sorry, it wasn't meant as a definition of marriage. Uniting with a harlot is obviously not marriage. But it says a lot about the spiritual meaning of sex and its power in marriage. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

A wedding cake is not something you'd find on a supermarket shelf. It is custom made for a particular occasion. Please refer to Message 213 for examples of wedding cakes. I've many times here already said there is no problem with anything available in a bakery except a personal custom-made wedding cake. If such a concoction were to appear on a supermarket shelf, which isn't going to happen, or in a bakery display case, which isn't going to happen, there is no problem with gays buying it. No "screaming banshees" are going to come out of the walls and beat the customers to a pulp. {Here's an idea for a clever entrepreneur perhaps: come up with a design for a tiered decorated cake that could be sold off the shelf. No personal custom construction, just a cake that could be used for the impromptu wedding you have in mind. It would still be pretty expensive but nowhere near the custom creation. { Or go to a pagan bakery and get the full elaborate personalized expensive cake. That's still an option.)

It is interesting to hear the whole story from the couple's side. I'd heard they were turned down very politely but if what they say is true it wasn't so polite.However, I don't get why someone who had lived as a lesbian for so many years would be so nave as not to know there could be problems with setting up a wedding to her lesbian partner, or why it would have such a devastating emotional effect on her, especially since her own mother had been opposed to her relationship until recently. And correct me if I misread, but I gather this all happened before the SCOTUS ruling too?Seems to me she could have been spared such pain, however, if some prudent forethought had been applied in order to avoid the painful situation. They ended up calling around and finding a bakery that wouldn't have a problem with a gay wedding. Shouldn't that have been done in the first place? As Moose pointed out, Oregon is a very liberal state, there must be hundreds of options for a gay wedding. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

He said all things are lawful FOR HIMSELF, which is the same thing he'd said about eating meats sacrificed to idols. This is about a liberty CHRISTIANS have, though it is clear from pages of NT text that we are to give up all sin so it can't be treating fornication or any other sin as optional. In any case it is not about unbelievers, which is who that list applies to, who will not inherit the kingdom of God, followed by the BUT that says many believers HAD BEEN in those categories abut are now sanctified. Now that you are sanctified you no longer do what you did as unbelievers. That's a theme throughout the NT.No commentator thinks he is saying that even Christians can do the things that keep a person from the kingdom of God. The whole point is to teach them that those things are outside the kingdom and they must not do them. He is teaching the Corinthians, a notoriously wild bunch because the city of Corinth was given over to an amazing variety of sins. Because of the rampant sin in their city they kept having to be taught against all kinds of things that a Christian would have to give up. Being used to that life, according to one commentary I read, they may even have thought that visiting prostitutes wasn't a problem but one of those things Christian freedom allowed to them. He's saying no, that would be joining Christ to a whore, clearly saying that's a bad thing, not an option because of Christian liberty.I quoted the paragraph just to show, in some context that came up that I've forgotten, that homosexuals are included among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God, until they repent and become sanctified by Christ, which ALWAYS means giving up your sin. How you can manage to turn it around as if it says such things are good in any context is quite the word magic. If you find the passage ambiguous enough to allow for such a bizarre interpretation. you need to at least realize that it is perfectly clear elsewhere in the NT that no such practice could possibly be acceptable in the Christian life.

To say it as clearly as I can: There is no way sin is ever lawful, it is the definition of lawlessness. It is what gets us sent to Hell. There is no way that could be what Paul meant. He was writing in a specific context to the unruly Corinthians, and it may be hard to understand because we don't have the complete context of the statement, but there is no way he is saying sin is lawful.

Accepting that the text is unaltered, my guess is that he didn't include enough of the context for us at such a remove from the experiences of the Corinthians to understand his meaning.In such a case we are to apply the principle that we aren't to base our theology on unclear passages like this one, especially since there are plenty of others which make it quite clear that the whole point of Christian salvation is to be saved from SIN, and there is no doubt what sin is either, the Bible from beginning to end makes it quite clear.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY AS SUCH. Which I've said so many times already I'd think even you would know that.HOWEVER, homosexuality is no trivial thing in the Bible either, as you are trying to claim. Homosexuality was practiced as part of the religious rituals in many of the heathen idolatries, it was thoroughly forbidden to the Jews for that reason as well as being a category of the sin of adultery.But again, I keep trying to say this is about God's definition of marriage far more than it is about the particular sin of homosexuality. The SCOTUS ruling made GAY MARRIAGE legal across the country, not homosexuality as such but gay MARRIAGE. This is why the county clerk, forgot her name, wouldn't sign marriage licenses for gays. She would also have to refuse to sign a license for a polygamous marriage if it was known to her, or for a marriage to an underage person and so on, whoever is excluded from the "right" to marriage. In those cases the secular law already excludes them.As a Christian she knows the SCOTUS ruling permits a marriage that God denies so she has to refuse it.The bakery, the florist and the photographer all refused their services to a GAY WEDDING, NOT TO GAYS, who, as I've said over and over and over and over and over, are not refused any service that isn't about a gay wedding, all the baked goods they want, all the flowers they want, all the photography of any other event they want.

This is off topic LNA and your discussions normally go so far afield from standard Christian theology they are a pain in the neck anyway. We don't need some special context for forbidding the eating of MEAT SACRIFICED TO IDOLS because that involves a person in that satanic idolatrous religion, and it's not a "petty" thing. But Christ conquered Satan and the eating of sacrificed meat doesn't compromise the conscience of a strong Christian believer - it's just meat, not a religious ritual in that case. If it compromises the conscience of a weak believer, however, we are to respect the conscience of that weak believer and not tempt him by eating such meat, but as a general principle it no longer affects Christians, and now that we no longer live surrounded by such idolatrous satanic religions it doesn't apply to us at all.There is no problem here and it has nothing to do with violating God's law of marriage.

YOUR understanding of how the Bible defines marriage is absolutely utterly and completely irrelevant. Conservative Christians know it forbids gay marriage and it doesn't matter in the slightest what YOU think about it.THIS IS NOT ABOUT JUDGING PERSONAL SINS, IT IS ABOUT THE DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE. GAY MARRIAGE CHANGES THE DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE, EVEN ADULTERY, THOUGH A SIN, DOES NOT.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Every word you said there is false, illogical and weirdly twisted as a matter of fact, but it doesn't matter, what I said still stands: Your understanding is absolutely and completely irrelevant, it's the conservative Christian view, that is shared by all those who have so far come in conflict with the gay marriage ruling, along with millions of others, that defines the problem this thread is about.

Message 278

Good grief, it isn't "just about meat!!" What Paul said about all things being lawful to him simply happens to refer back to that one passage about eating meat sacrificed to idols. Because that's where he said those very same words. But in the context of 1 Cor 6 he must be using it to refer to some view held by someone in the Corinthian Church. Since he mentions being joined to a harlot it is frequently guessed that he was dealing with the opinion that visiting prostitutes was lawful for a Christian. Not meat, visiting prostitutes. As I argued, there is so much in the Bible that makes it clear that sin cannot ever be "lawful" let alone Paul's remark in this very context that it would mean joining Christ to a harlot, which is a clear statement that it isn't lawful, there is no way to justify the lawfulness of sin from this passage, and if it doesn't suffice for you, read the reast of the Bible which should leave no doubt.

Why would you think I think that since I've said no such thing?. It governs the conscience of the people who have had to refuse service for a gay wedding (not gays in any other context -- only a gay WEDDING.) That's all I've said. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Oh good grief. The point is ONLY that the words Paul used -- "All things are lawful to me" -- refer to the passage about eating meat sacrificed to idols. Those very words. That's why 1 Cor 6 is always referred to that passage. And there's nothing spiritualized about that reference, it's about actual meat that has been actually sacrificed on an altar to some demon ido/godl, and whether Christians should be concerned about actually eating that actual meat because it might associate them in their own minds with idolatry. There's no need to bring any other reference into this.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But that is not what is being discussed and things are confused enough without my trying to get into the question of the validity of the law itself. It's a secular law in a secular society, a Christian can't very well ask for it to be different, and nobody is suggesting any way we get a right to be exempted from it, so it's taken for granted on this thread that we have to obey or take the consequences. The only point is that it does affect Christians who can't agree with the secular definition and that's really all there is to it, except people keep arguing that we're wrong to see it as we do, and so on and so forth.Again, the only point on this thread is that the law legitimizing gay marriage can put strict Bible-believing Christians in the position of appearing to agree with the legitimacy of gay marriage if asked to do something that implies its legitimacy, such as make a wedding cake for a gay wedding, or arrange flowers for a gay wedding, or take photos at a gay wedding, which they cannot do because of how they/we understand God's ordinance of marriage, based on the passages I quoted. Everything in the Bible is to be read in the light of everything else in the Bible because it's all true and one part can't be made to contradict another part. Homosexual acts are clearly forbidden in many places in the Bible. They are treated as sin. The idea that you could somehow sanctify homosexual acts by "marriage" is at least a cruel joke from a Christian point of view.The passage I quoted is understood to be THE definition of marriage. It covers the entirety of what constitutes marriage: man cleaves to wife (woman) and together they two, and nobody else, become "one flesh" -- which is objectified in the birth of children, if there are any, the children of course being the literal fleshly fruit of the marital union.

• Marriage is not required by those passages, it is merely defined.
• The definition is complete as given: it applies to nothing other than a man and a woman.
• Again "saying nothing" about anything isn't an argument against that "anything's" being implied. There are many passages about marriage in the Bible, many in the New Testament prescribing proper attitudes and so on. all referring to the union of one man and one woman.

However, the bottom line is that it doesn't matter what anyone thinks about it except the conservative Christians who are getting punished for refusing to violate it, which is a small number so far, but that view is shared by millions of others.Really, the only answer to this is that yes, we are subject to the law, and yes in some circumstances we will be forced to disobey it, and yes, in that case we will be punished, giving up all businesses that cater to weddings in some cases, and yes, some people will be very happy to see us punished. Such as AZPaul who is nearly in ecstasy at the thought.That's all there is to it. If everyone would just agree the thread could be closed. Edited by Faith, : improve wording